kwong-juh duh

8 posts from January 2012

01/19/2012

I hated meat loaf growing up. I don't exactly know why, they may have been perfectly fine but in my memories they were tough and dry and you had to drown them in ketchup or mix them with your potatoes to make them tolerable. Bottom line: I didn't like meat loaf, so I never made one.

The kids and I have been home with school cancelled for 4 days now. Tomorrow will be the fifth. They don't understand why I make them change their pajamas each day for a clean pair - but if I didn't they would be in 4 day old clothing. I am lucky to have a job that I can work from home and no power outages. I stocked my pantry last weekend so I haven't had to leave the house for groceries. But we are going a little stir crazy and I'm making do with what I've got here.

What I've got here included a pound of 93% Black Angus Ground Beef. I wasn't sure what to do with it. I really wanted to make shepherds pie (a meal from my childhood that I have VERY good memories of), but the kids hate that. So I got out the big huge cookbook I received as a Christmas gift from a friend and looked up meat loaf. I figured if anyone could make a good meat loaf, it was going to be Cooks Illustrated.

While meat loaf cooked, I simmered these things in a saucepan. Then when loaf was 140 degrees I spooned half the mix on the top of the loaf and put it under the broiler until bubbling and browing. Then I put the other half of the glaze on and again let it broil until bubbling.

Took it out of the oven, waited a few minutes (maybe 5-10 at most) and sliced it for serving with mashed potatoes and corn (just in case it was awful and potatoes were required to make it edible).

Chris didn't like it at all. Allyson liked it, but thought the sauce was too sweet and preferred the 'inner' meat without it. I liked the flavor a lot and also liked that it wasn't dry and tough. Didn't care so much about the glaze, but the three of us don't really like ketchup anyway. I'll try going without it next time.

YOUR MILEAGE MAY VARY: I don't know what sort of texture you like for your meatstuffs. This was not as firm as a hamburger, the texture hinted at a pate (I've only had pate once, so I could be way off on that comparison) as it was sort of a, well, smooth texture and easy to cut with a fork. No, you couldn't spread it on a cracker, but as you can see from the photo, it would crumble a bit like pumpkin bread does. I wouldn't mind it a little bit firmer, if I could achieve that without crossing the line to tough and dry.

I can't believe I'm saying this... but I'm kind of looking forward to having a meat loaf sandwich for lunch Friday.

Also... Big thinky thoughts percolating, but a food post is all I'm writing tonight, I'm still fleshing out theories. Collatin' data as they say.

01/18/2012

At the invitation of a mutual friend, I had the opportunity to have dinner with Patsy and Clyde Tombaugh in the mid-1990s. Don't know who the Tombaugh's are? Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto in 1930, after being hired by Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff Arizona based not on educational training but on amateur drawings of Jupiter and Mars, and his home-built telescopes.

Patsy and Clyde were a lovely couple. I felt honored to meet him and was probably a little awkward and tongue tied at first. But both Clyde and Patsy were incredibly down to earth and friendly. I was touched by how genuine and engaging they both were to a couple of awkward college students. Kind, intelligent, with no hint of elitism or self-importance. This man discovered Pluto. It would be easy to say that he was an alpha-geek before it was cool and that is why he wasn't arrogant or an intellectual snob, but I'd met loads of professors by this point that soundly disprove that theory. I am left with the believe that his humility speaks volumes about his character.

You can't have dinner with the Tombaugh's and meet them yourself, but this 5:28 video gives you a good idea of the kind of people they were.

Clyde discovered a planet* but was A Normal Guy. If the Tombaugh's hadn't made an impression of the kind of person I wanted to be, I wouldn't remember a three hour dinner 15 years later.

*I know Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006, but that occurred after Clyde's death. At the time of Pluto's discovery a new planet had not been identified in our solar system since Neptune in 1846. This was an International Big Deal. And he wasn't even 25 yet. Shortly after this, Disney introduced a character with the same name. And in Chinese, Japanese and Korean the name was translated as underworld king star. How cool is that?

Kind of puts one's sense of achievements and self importance into perspective, hm?

Clyde passed away in 1997, his wife Patsy passed away this month. Rest in peace, Patsy and Clyde. Enjoy the view of the stars (and planets and dwarf planets), wherever you are.

01/16/2012

I don't usually blog twice a day and I'm not a news aggregator and haven't done extensive research but oh my $DEITY these two medical breakthroughs are HUGE. I am actually giddy on an adreneline rush after watching this 3:28 minute video tonight:

When I was in college I took SOC418, Sociology of Death Grief and Bereavement. In it we discussed a lot of things including the afterlife, assisted suicide/death with dignity, and the question of personal choice when it comes to death (DNR orders). The first time I took this course I was naive enough to be honest about my beliefs on these topics. A year or two later when I took the course a second time to improve my grade so I could graduate with honors I wrote papers that aligned with my professor's beliefs instead of my own - the closest I ever came to academic dishonesty in my opinion. My D turned into an A, and I choked down the self-disgust at the crap I turned in. Seriously, an entire paper (more like a fictional essay) was written with "Hold On" by Sarah McLachlan as the premise.

ANYWAY I digress. The point of telling you about this class at all is that during my second round in the course, we watched a video of a man who had received 2nd and 3rd degree burns over most of his body. Treatment was excruciating. He wasn't expected to live. He begged the doctors and his family to let him die, to kill him if necessary or at least to stop treating him. They refused, under the premise that he was not of sound mind due to the pain. The pain was horrific (the film wasn't just flashbacks but actually filmed during treatment starting shortly after the fire), and went on for months of debriding, grafting, infection treatment, and eventual healing. Once healed he was horribly disfigured. I don't remember if he ended up thankful he wasn't allowed to die. I just remember the horror of treating burns.

If you haven't watched the video yet, GO WATCH IT NOW. Because that right there is revolutionary. That changes everything. That research NEEDS TO CONTINUE.

The second medical advancement I read about recently that is also HUGE is that researchers believe they may be on the verge of treating Type 1 diabetes even in long-term diabetics who were believed to no longer be capable of producing insulin due to damage to the islet cells in the pancreas. Through a combination of patient and donor stem cell treatment, the immune system is re-educated to not attack the pancreas, which begins producing insulin again. While the test subjects did not recover to a point of no longer needing insulin injections, diabetics receiving this treatment are expected to see significant improvements in overall long term health as blood sugar levels are better moderated and controlled. This treatment may also hold promise for people who suffer from other auto-immune disorders like lupus or rheumatoid arthritis.

I'm not a very good cook in my opinion, when things come out well I'm usually surprised. My skill as a cook is not helped by the fact that I hate doing recipe research. I want to make great food, I just don't want to have to expend a ton of effort beyond the actual food prep and cooking to do it.

This means I do a lot of experimentation in the kitchen that honestly, probably could be avoided. Sometimes though, the experimentation is fun (see old TestKitchenposts).

The meals I am consistently the best at making are almost universally breakfasts. This is a good thing since my dream is to retire and run a bed and breakfast somewhere warm and tropical. For that to work I need 7-10 really solid breakfast routines. Yesterday I made my version of bacon egg mcmuffins with brie, poached egg, and thick bacon, accompanied by fresh squeezed orange juice and a very tasty latte (I am not sure, but they might be even yummier when in a pretty cup. Clearly this would be a placebo effect. Further testing required.)

I've only gotten on a fresh squeezed OJ trip since late September 2011 after having it in a fabulous room service breakfast at the W hotel. I went out and bought a manual citrus juicer at Target for not much money, and a bag of oranges. I didn't even check the type of oranges. The results were heavenly. So I took the juicer and two bags of oranges with us on a road trip to a friend's cabin where the photo below was rather appropriately titled Orangageddon.

(the orange lid to the juicer fits on the clear container on the left - when that got full we transferred the juice to the glass pouring bowl on the right for serving. This photo was taken after several glasses had already been filled.)

I am pretty sure both times the oranges I bought were navel oranges. The juice was sweet and delicious. This weekend I ended up juicing what I thought were Valencia oranges, but apparently were Minneola oranges that I got a 3# bag of from Amazon Fresh for under $5. Either way, they produced a ton of juice, I've got some left for this morning. But the juice is a lot higher pulp, and not quite as sweet.

So now I am deep in food experimentation mindset, thinking about testing a variety of oranges and possibly tangerines to determine the best fresh oj combination. I've got blood oranges in the kitchen, I might squeeze one or two of them just to see how they taste both individually as well as blended with the Minneolas.

I'm sure this is something I could look up on the internet or that America's Test Kitchen has already evaluated. But I kind of like the testing process. :)

01/04/2012

I'm going to go to beat on my punching bag now and try to recreate all my content USING WORD TO WRITE THE BLOG AND THEN COPY/PASTING IT INTO THE BROWSER BECAUSE APPARENTLY THAT IS HOW YOU HAVE TO AUTHOR WEB CONTENT IN IE tomorrow night. Hey, at least that way I'll have a goddamned spellcheck.

Or maybe I'll just install Firefox.

-KymPossible

P.S. Billy, I doubt you read my blog anymore, but you know what I'm thinking right now.

Recently a friend I was exchanging brief text messages with associated social media with Pride and Vanity. (To be fair, this happened because I mentioned I was working on a theory where Zynga =Grand Purveyors of Sloth).

In all honesty, the timing of this conversation put me a bit on the defensive - I had just made my first blogpost in months and in it stated that I was trying to blog more in the future - but I tried my best to control that reaction. Just because on a semi-regular basis we talk about people we know that we think of as media whores, whose every tweet or Facebook post is calling attention to themselves, doesn't mean I should assume I was suddenly being classed with arrogant egomaniacs.

But this friend, well, I don't always agree with them but I have always respected them. I cherish this friend because they make me think and grow as a person, I feel like I am a smarter and more well rounded human being for having them in my life - they give me a +10 modifier to intelligence. So while I didn't want get into the conversation over a chat client where miscommunication was likely, I did tell them I was looking forward to discussing it in person when we had a chance (and I genuinely was!)

That conversation happened today, and it was so invigorating I asked if they would mind my blogging about it (I take friend privacy seriously). Before we talked though, I had a day and a half to reflect on my social media practices. I have been blogging since long long long ago, long before even meeting them, on something called MSN Groups (later rebranded as MSN Spaces), then MySpace, then Vox, now Typepad. How am I using social media differently now than I did when I first met this friend? When I first started blogging? Am I trending towards (or worse yet, already a member of) the Me Me Me Club?

I took a long look back at old blogposts on the platforms that still exist, and realized that Facebook has made me lazy, something I blogged about 2 years ago. When I look at my old blogs I see I did a lot more reading, and would write about the things I had read. I don't mean an online book club but I would share links to interesting articles I had read and discuss my thoughts on them, write about movies I had seen/music that inspires me, discuss philosophical stuff, discuss things I had made (frequently food), play music trivia games with my readers, etc. I was more well rounded. But somewhere along the line I'm doing less reading, less thinking. I'm writing about activity in my life (loving my super clean bathroom!) that is completely inane instead of meaningful activity in the world around me and my role as a participant or observer. In a nutshell, I'm not adding value to the collective consciousness.

There is a ton more writing I am going to do on this topic over the next few days, as I haven't even started scratching the surface of the great discussion that was had today on what is wrong (and what is right) with social media and why the problems are so concerning, or my thoughts on why it is happening (likely to be an entire blogpost on human identity and the emotional social needs of humans). There will also be a blogpost about my belief that we are in the middle of a major change in society on par with the invention of radio or television for communication, and I'm not entirely sure we are treating our newfound power with the responsibility it demands.

Wow. For someone who didn't know what to blog about 3 days ago, looks like I've got a lot of content lined up already.

-KymPossible

Did anyone catch that Vanity is not actually one of the Seven Deadly Sins? In modern times it is considered a subset of Pride, however in earlier lists there were EIGHT sins and Vainglory was it's own independent track to eternal damnation.

I probably won't be as funny as AtomicLuLu's comment on a mutual friend's Facebook status was.

Still, I find myself itching to write again. Facebook has a lot more immediate feedback in comments and "like's" from readers that keeps me coming back like the addict mouse pushing the lever to get the pellet push pellet push pellet push pellet push OMG WHERE IS MY FUCKING PELLET?

Sorry, didn't mean to shout.

Today's post is likely to ramble a bit. I don't have a clear topic I've planned to talk about. I'm just seeing what happens when I come back to the keyboard. Bear with me for a few days while I get my groove back.

I've just sat and stared at the screen for 5 minutes blankly.

Then I spent an hour writing a blogpost that is too personal for the internet and got filed away in my journal. By the time this is re-written and posted it will most certainly be Day 2 of the New Year. In my defense, SHUT UP THIS IS A FREE ENTERTAINMENT SERVICE.

Right. Let's try this again.

Each year I try to set goals for myself. Not resolutions per se, they are typically focused on personal development and things I want to learn. In 2007 I tried learning to enjoy things I wasn't necessarily The Best at, like pool or air hockey, without then compulsively feeling the need to practice them until I was The Best. In 2008 it was living deliberately and fearlessly - not a reckless danger seeking sort of thing but not letting fear of uncertainty or what others might think of me stop me from doing something. In 2009 it was learning to be less rigidly inflexible and symmetrical, but to embrace imperfection. To do this I took up abstract oil painting (a few examples here,here, and here). In 2010 I had a new job, new house, new life to learn to exist in. 2011 I tried to learn to rest more and take care of myself. I don't have to be working on something every minute, it is ok to sit and read a book for a few hours, I don't have to be DOING SOMETHING PRODUCTIVE. I might have learned this a little too well since there are three incomplete home improvement projects I haven't touched all year.

I don't know yet what I am going to try to learn in 2012. I'll let you know once I figure it out. I've got some new books on goal setting that I'm reading, I expect (hope) they will help me focus my thoughts.

About all I've got on the 'personal goals' list right now is a need to get back on a structured workout regime because I told my brother's girlfriend Emily that if she trained for a 5K race in Tucson in late March that I would come run it with her. I hate running. But my best friend is running the half marathon so I was going to go and be there anyway, and it is good to have goals... I don't actually care about the race, I just want to get back in shape and tone up. I don't have weight to lose, but I'd like to rebuild some of the muscle I had in 2008. Hopefully the race will help me get back in the swing of things on the personal fitness front.

There is a lot on my mind and heart these days, I just have to figure out how to write about it, and what to publish here vs keep in my journal. Things rolling around in my head that may or may not eventually become blogposts:

just say no to drama (does not require me to return my Thespian varsity letter)

turning awful tween television into positive teaching moments for children

women who inspire me

music review of concerts I attended in 2011 (there were a lot of them)

possibly some posts inspired by lyrics

And since we started with "Bitches, please" making me laugh...

Let's be clear. If Ron had been kidnapped by dark forces you can bet your ass that Hermione would have mounted a rescue mission to save him.

And if Han had gotten irrationally jealous of Leia and Luke and run off in a snit there is no way Leia would have chased after him. Like Hermione she would have continued the battle against the Imperial Forces.